My experience of managing my life is like my experience of managing
my house. It's a big house - to be sure. It's at least as big as
our planet.
It's possibly as
vast
as the universe. But this conversation isn't a disclosure of how
many square feet my house comprises. It's really an
observation
of all the choices I had in
creating
my house the way it is. It's also an
observation
of all the choices I have for remodeling my house now
newly, given that it's turned out the way it has.

One possibility for my house is it was built by me, perfectly to my
specifications, exactly to my liking. Another possibility is it's
just the house I ended up owning without having
anything to do with how it got to be this way. In other
words,
it's the house I ended up living in without being responsible for
the way it was built.

It's the second option which grabs my
attention.
That's the one which
wakes me up.
This is an uncomfortable truth to tell, frankly. It's the truth
about which elements of my life for which I'm now totally and
solely responsible, I didn't have any clear choice in
creating
ie I didn't take any responsibility for
creating.

It's brutal confronting how my life turned out in
those areas for which I didn't take full responsibility. There are
also those areas in which I sensed I had some
responsibility, yet didn't take responsibility for them at the time
- which is to say I didn't
wake up
to my responsibility in the matter until it was too late. By
then, many of those areas of my life which were once malleable and
easy to rearrange, had coalesced, gelled, solidified in
place.

You know, it's a lot easier to rearrange the layout of a new house
before the adobe, cement, plaster, and stucco has set, and
before the paint and varnish has dried ...

... which leads me to the realization that the new house I'd bought (ie
in this analogy) which I expected to be exactly the
perfect home for me, was actually designed by someone who had
none of my personal preferences in mind. Now, as the new
owner of this house, I see I have two choices. They are:

1)

accepting the house the way it is, resigning myself to
the way the house is, tolerating the house the way it is etc. But
look: whichever way I phrase this, it's really nothing less (and
nothing more) than suffering the house the way it is;

... or ...

2)

gutting the house entirely, stripping it down to the
studs and rebuilding it from scratch, this time making it
completely mine - and completely new.

Given these two choices, there's no choice really. It's a no
brainer. The second choice is the one I make. It's actually become
the metaphor for any critical period of my life. I look at
how I've
created
myself to be, and if I see it's not
working,
I can always strip it down to the studs again - which is to say I
always have the option of breaking myself up especially in
areas where I've become too fixed ie too static for my own
good, and
create
myself anew, again becoming someone I love being.

Listen: I could say a thousand things about
Werner's work.
No, I could say a million things about
Werner's work.
But if I only get to say one thing about what makes
Werner's work
worthwhile, it's this:

The way you consider yourself to be, isn't fixed. It's not static. At
all times under any circumstances, you have the freedom to be any way
you choose. At all times under any circumstances, you have the freedom
to remodel the house, you have the freedom to strip it down to the
studs and refurbish it newly (so to speak) any way you choose.